UConn Gaming Club bringing esports revolution to Storrs, the Big East and beyond

In a brick building that blends into the outskirts of UConn’s campus, a storage room littered with boxes of computer equipment is reshaping the landscape of Husky athletics.

This modest space inside the Merlin D. Bishop Center, home to the department of digital media and design, is used to stow the UConn Gaming Club’s tools of the trade: monitors, mouses, keyboards and headsets optimized for competitive gaming.

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The club, originally known as UConn ESports when it was founded in 2012 before rebranding in 2016, is staffed by 27 students, including four officers, and holds weekly meetings throughout the semester to plan all-day events that have drawn hundreds of gamers. Though not officially sanctioned by the university, nor the NCAA, tournaments attract sponsors and prizes are awarded to winning teams.

But as with traditional sports, competitions are a culmination, the reward for long hours spent training, studying tactics and tendencies on video, and, yes, maintaining healthy habits. The line between esports and its better-known counterparts is getting, well, pixelated.

“It’s not football, for sure. The concussions are few. But the sport itself does require a lot of endurance," said Ken Thompson, an assistant professor-in-residence and former game designer who serves as the club’s faculty advisor. "Chess was an Olympic sport at one time. There are times when we have accepted less physical sports into the realm of competitiveness. We should look to that as a guidepost.”

Interest in the club is on the rise thanks to the mainstream attention esports have garnered in recent years, resulting in a new partnership with SUBOG, the university’s student government organization. And UConn’s impending move to the Big East is expected to help facilitate esports matchups with other member schools.

When a block party heralded the arrival of the freshman class on Aug. 24, the UCGC tent sat in a prime location atop the crest at the center of campus. New students were invited to try their hand at games for which the club fields teams, such as Overwatch, a first-person shooter that emphasizes a team dynamic, and Super Smash Bros., a cartoonish fighting game featuring iconic Nintendo characters.

From that vantage point on Fairfield Way, the club’s larger goals never felt closer.

“When I first got involved in the executive team behind the Gaming Club, from Day One my vision was, ‘I want an event in Gampel Pavilion,'” said club president Devyn Lowry. "If I can graduate and [say we] hosted an event in Gampel Pavilion, that’ll make me happy.”

Shifting perceptions

You’ll find an esports tab on ESPN’s website and professional competitions have become a multibillion-dollar enterprise, so renting out the iconic basketball arena on the Storrs campus isn’t an outlandish proposition.

Yet the obstacles facing the UConn Gaming Club are what you might expect of a sport waged on keyboards and mousepads: snorts, snickers and sideways glances from the uninitiated, and a struggle for full-fledged recognition from the university.

In reality, competitive gaming exacts both a physical and mental toll. Matches can be grueling, so lapses in focus can manifest as momentum-swinging mistakes. To minimize those, esports teams at UConn will schedule scrimmages or seek opponents from other schools. Video on-demand (VOD) viewings are akin to film study sessions, and they’re especially beneficial when it comes to the more collaborative games.

UConn student Jamie Pisacane, at left, plays Overwatch at the UConn Gaming Club's tent during last month's freshman block party on campus. She's dressed as Mercy, a character from the game. (Courtesy of the UConn Gaming Club) (The UConn Gaming Club)

Overwatch, for instance, divides six-player teams into roles defined by the concepts of “damage” or “support” — essentially offense and defense. And like a team harboring a me-first star, selfishness and “off-field” distractions can instantly sink the group’s hopes.

“If you’re thinking about something else or you’re not focused on your training when you’re going to play the match, you’re gonna fail,” said Ryan Marsh, the club’s event director and an avid Overwatch player. “If you’re not in the right mind space, you can’t do your role of whatever game you’re trying to play properly.”

Welcome to the virtual Big East

The news in mid-June that UConn had secured membership with the revamped Big East conference was hailed as a homecoming. There were billboards and a New York press conference and a wave of nostalgia for decades past, when basketball battles with bitter regional rivals lifted the Huskies to new heights.

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More subdued were the esports implications for such a move, which figures to foster its own set of new and exciting relationships.

The esports Big East is “in its infancy,” Marsh said, but the hope is that a sort of virtual conference can take shape, commencing regular competition among member schools.

The NCAA has not yet added esports to the list of 24 sports it governs, though some schools, like Robert Morris University Illinois in Chicago, have folded esports programs into their athletic departments. Some even offer scholarships.

UConn is happy to let UCGC — a Tier 2 club, one notch below the handful of student organizations that receive funding aided by tuition fees — broaden its horizons and would help with travel expenses, Thompson said. But tournaments have remained local to this point.

Decals on the wall at the unofficial headquarters of the UConn Gaming Club depict the evolution of a gamer. (Chris Brodeur / Hartford Courant)

“Hopefully this is the year to really start breaking out, to really start making people pay attention,” Thompson said.

The club’s marquee annual events are the Winter Prowl and the Husky Games, the latter of which saw 450 gamers from UConn and beyond compete in nine tournaments at the student union ballroom last spring. Competition is fierce but cordial, a hallmark of collegiate esports and the industry at large.

“Pretty much everyone in esports, at least at the collegiate level, is very nice,” Marsh said. “Everyone’s really supportive. And if you ask for help, they will do what they can. Or they will tell you who can do what you need. Everyone’s really accessible.”

A look at one of the controllers used at the 2019 Husky Games. It's branded with the UConn Gaming Club's logo. (Pietro Fernandez / UConn Gaming Club)

“Gaming is a cause for good,” Lowry said. “It’s a huge driver for good. It’s a stress relief. It makes people happy. It brings people from everywhere together.”